


Humanity

by InsanitysRequiem



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Gen, Implied Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanitysRequiem/pseuds/InsanitysRequiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the events of Graduation Day, Aigis meets a strange woman in blue at Paulownia Mall, and they have a chat.</p><p>WARNING: As this is a post-game fic, it contains spoilers for the ending of Persona 3 Portable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> I think it bears repeating: this fic spoils the major ending point of Persona 3 Portable almost immediately, so I'd suggest not reading it until you've completed the game! Also, just because Minako's technically non-canon doesn't mean her version of The Answer or Arena didn't happen in this timeline...right? 
> 
> This is my first fanfic in several years. I really hope you enjoy.

The sun was setting on Paulownia Mall, though that didn't seem to bother the shoppers very much. The hustle and bustle of the shopping center was at its usual activity levels for a Spring afternoon, with men, women, and children swarming the storefronts and restaurants excitedly. Dull murmurs of conversation hung over the groups of people scattered around the vicinity, some cheerful and some impatient, some upset and some excited, though no one seemed to have cares past the immediate. Two women stood by the entrance to the Cafe Chagall, gossiping idly. A child cried as he failed to win a Jack Frost doll from the claw machine outside the arcade. A harried-looking salaryman furtively glanced around as he exited the karaoke bar with his head held low. Everyone had their lives to live, their days to spend listlessly, and their own problems to consider.

It was hard to believe, Aigis mused as she observed the scene, that to anyone but herself, it was just another weekday. 

Several days had passed since Graduation Day. The appropriate expression to describe it would not be 'it was a day Aigis would never forget', as Aigis could not forget. Her memory banks that stored every moment of every day ensured that. Rather, it was a day Aigis wished she _could_ forget. Technically, Minako Arisato's death didn't occur until the day after Graduation Day, early in the morning, but Aigis's memory banks were functioning in such a way that recalling their final conversation on the roof of the school filled the robot girl with an intense and heavy feeling that refused to be classified.

The feeling left her feeling cold, weighed down, and choked. She had replayed their last words to each other over and over again in her mind, trying to understand every aspect of emotion that the day had made her feel, trying to logically process it all, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't consolidate it all. It was far too much, far too quickly. One moment, she would want to cry just as she cried on the rooftop, freely and openly as Minako's consciousness slipped away. The next, the robot girl would want to violently blow open her own chassis to expose her wires and circuits and pull the Plume of Dusk that kept her operational out of herself and crush it in her cold hands. Some moments, she just wanted to scream. It was an emotion that defied description, that defied logic, that defied everything that she had been programmed to react to, and Aigis had no idea how to handle it.

Today was a special day in itself, which is why she had come to this mall. Aigis had had enough of special days for the time being, and with the rest of the former SEES busy, she felt it a good day to spend alone. Luckily, her school uniform provided adequate camouflage from any unwanted stares. It seemed as though everyone had nothing but stares for Aigis as of late, even her own teammates. Though human emotion was still a new experience to the anti-Shadow suppression weapon, she had quickly learned what it was like to feel blamed.

The sun continued to set, shining through the skylight and staining the area a deep, fiery orange, and Aigis moved over to the large fountain in the center of the mall. It was sputtering and gurgling happily, the water shooting from its center cascading down into the pool at its base. Careful not to get her clothes too wet, Aigis perched herself on the side of the fountain, traced the path of the waterfall with her eyes and gingerly dipped her steel-tipped fingers into the cool waters in the basin. The sudden temperature change sent a shock of sensation to the robot girl's central processing unit, and she smiled. Aigis liked the large water feature. Its continuous noises and the feelings of the water lapping against her hand were soothing, as were the sun's fading rays that danced on the pool's surface and reflected into her optical sensors. They were all sources of comfort to the robot girl as they pleasantly stimulated her sensory processing units, though above everything, they were comforting because they reminded her of her first trip to Paulownia Mall. More precisely, it reminded Aigis of the time Minako had tried to teach her about the concept of 'wishing'.

Humans had many superstitions, Aigis knew from her data files, and Minako was no exception. Unfortunately, no matter how many ten-yen coins she tossed into the fountain, Aigis found it incredibly hard to grasp what the young girl had tried to teach her. She had had many questions at the time. Why would one want to waste so much money? What purpose or science was there behind throwing a piece of metal into a body of water? What kind of thing does one 'wish' for?

Minako had answered every question the robot had asked with a patient response and a smile. In the end, the exercise had proven futile, as it was something that Aigis at the time simply could not comprehend. Minako wasn't discouraged. On the contrary, all she did was laugh and throw her arms around Aigis, hugging her quickly before they headed back to the dorm together. 

Aigis blinked as she recalled all the questions she had had at the time. Now she only had one. What had Minako wished for? There was a strange churning sensation deep inside her chassis as she realized that now she would never know.

"She was a very special girl," came a voice from Aigis's right. 

The robot girl slowly turned her head in surprise towards the source of the voice. Who she saw was a tall, slender, pale woman dressed in a dark blue dress that had unusual circle patterns down the front. Her hair was striking, an unnatural silver that almost seemed to glow the longer Aigis stared at it. Her eyes were a soft gold, and her dark-blue-gloved hands held a small velvet coin purse to her side.

Aigis hadn't noticed anyone sit next to her, lost in reverie as she was, and the woman who had spoke hadn't made a noise beforehand. For a specially-built anti-Shadow suppression weapon, it was unusual for her senses to fail like that. In fact, it wasn't just her auditory sensors that this woman seemed to be confusing. There was something about her outline that made Aigis's ocular sensors unable to focus entirely. Her thermographic sensors seemed confused as well, displaying values both too hot and too cold for a normal human temperature in equal measure. She could not detect a pulse. No matter how she tried, Aigis could not place this ethereal woman in any human category. At the same time, nothing about her seemed to compare to the Shadows either. She became yet another unclassifiable entity that Aigis's programming could not and would not consolidate.

"Oh, I apologize for my rudeness," the woman said, smiling softly. She stood up and curtseyed. "I am Elizabeth. And you…you must be Aigis. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

"Yes," Aigis confirmed. "I am Aigis, a seventh-generation anti-Shadow suppression-"

Her preprogrammed speech broke off as everything Elizabeth had said to her registered in her database. She had been too busy trying to place the woman into a category that she completely failed to process her speech.

"How do you know my name?" Aigis asked.

Elizabeth's soft smile changed, widening such a tiny fraction that anyone but Aigis wouldn't have been able to tell. It only made her expression even more inscrutable.

"She spoke about you rather often," she replied.

"She?" Aigis asked. Whatever she had expected to hear, it wasn't that. The heavy feeling fluttered in her chest again. "Do you mean Minako-san?"

"You were thinking about her just now, were you not?" Elizabeth asked, her innocent tone matching her wide-eyed look.

"Yes," Aigis replied, frowning, "I was. How did you know?"

Elizabeth smiled again, though on her it was a strange flighty smirk that Aigis's facial expression identification unit could not quite place.

"I am tasked to learn as much as I can about a great many things," she replied. She looked towards the fountain, and for the first time since noticing her presence, Aigis saw her smile drop just slightly. "I have learned much about humans within the past year."

"You are not human?" Aigis asked. It was a formality at this point, an attempt at human politeness.

"It is not simply humans who come to this place," Elizabeth said. "You are certainly not human, and yet you are engaging in the very human activity of 'reminiscing'. I wonder why that is?"

The robot girl's expression darkened as the heavy feeling she thought she felt deep in her chassis began to spread with newfound fury. The woman in blue continued to talk, oblivious, pacing in front of Aigis and the fountain.

"Humans are such wonderful creatures. I do love to observe them. They have such complex and interesting customs and beliefs. I had only read about them beforehand, you know, and it is very different when you experience them in such a deep and intimate manner!"

"I comprehend," Aigis replied. The feeling had spread, and though Aigis knew she wouldn't need maintenance for several weeks, she couldn't help but feel as though there was a strange and painful burning sensation in her chest area.

"I learned much from her," Elizabeth continued. Her voice had grown softer. "She would take me to many different places where humans experienced pleasure, or pain. Though I had many questions, she would patiently answer each one. I feel it may have been the same for you."

Aigis nodded. Her language output systems were having a hard time functioning, so she said nothing in reply.

"When I spent time with her, I felt my world expanding in a way I never thought possible. I grew, I learned, and perhaps I should not mention this but I started to feel so many emotions that it made even question my role as servant. It was an illuminating and exhilarating experience. Perhaps she would have called it…'the bomb'?"

Elizabeth fell silent and for the first time her smile almost entirely faded. She unclasped her velvet coin purse and withdrew a single ten-yen coin which she held up to the light. With a fluid motion, she flipped it into the air, where it created a perfect arc and splashed down into the basin of the fountain. She smiled wistfully at the small noise it made.

"Ah…" she said, her eyes still on her coin as it lay motionless in the water. "Perhaps not."

The feeling inside Aigis had changed. No longer a heavy spreading feeling that burned her from the inside-out, it was now more like a vicious monster clawing away at her insides. The robot girl sat, frozen, her right hand tensing and untensing very slightly. She wanted to reply, to say something, but this strange and alien emotion threatened to consume her and refused to be silenced or sorted into an easy-to-manage box. Other functions, it seemed, would have to wait.

"She spoke very highly of you," Elizabeth said, suddenly turning to face the robot girl.

Aigis looked at the woman in blue, her eyes widening. Elizabeth stared back. "I see," Aigis said. It was all she could muster at this point.

"When we explored this world she would often tell me tales of your time together," Elizabeth continued. "We would often visit places of human superstition to make wishes as per the custom, and hers was always the same. Unlike most humans, it did not seem as though she subscribed to the belief that her wish would not come true if she told someone."

Elizabeth's voice, as distant as it already was, only seemed to grow moreso as she spoke of days gone by.

"Whether we placed coins in this fountain or went to the shrine," she said, "her wish was always to see you smile again." 

The words were like an electric shock to Aigis, a shock that no amount of frantic diagnostics checks could find the source of. She blinked rapidly, unable to respond to Elizabeth.

"I began to grow very curious about you, as you always seemed to make her very happy," Elizabeth continued. She folded her hands and looked directly at the robot girl sitting on the side of the fountain. "The light in her eyes was never more pronounced than when she spoke of you. You must have been very special to her."

"She was very special to me," Aigis replied. Each word seemed to take an enormous amount of effort just to say aloud. "She was my…"

Aigis stopped. She did not know how to finish that sentence. Minako Arisato was everything to her. She was the girl she was sworn to protect. She was programmed to stay with her, to defend her. Her mission was always to serve her. From the moment of her activation, Aigis lived to be with her. She was the girl she wanted to spend every moment of every day with. She was the girl she _had_ to spend every day with. Her foremost priorities were to protect, defend, and serve, and in the end, Aigis had failed to do all three. After everything that had happened, the girl she cared for most in the world had passed away in her arms just a few short days ago.

No single word in her databank seemed to adequately summarize how much Minako Arisato had meant to her, how much the girl had taught her, how her smile had brightened her day even when she was new to the dorm and barely knew what a smile was. No word could portray how it felt to fight by her side, to spend those long hours on the roof of Gekkoukan High together, to visit her room at night and be close to her. No word would be able to replicate what Aigis felt that night when she stared into Minako's eyes, when she clasped the other girl's hands, when Minako reached up and burned her fingerprint into her memory forever, and when they embraced each other and held each other close for a long, long time. Nothing, no words, no amount of replaying old memories and trying to cling to what was would ever adequately explain how much Minako Arisato meant to Aigis, how lost and alone she felt now, and trying only made the clawing beast inside her slam against her metal chest in a desperate attempt to get out.

"…priority," Aigis finished. Her gaze returned to the fountain. She did not want to look at Elizabeth. She did not want to look at anyone. It was only when she felt a hand place itself delicately on her cloth-covered metal shoulder that she looked away to see that the woman in blue had noiselessly sat next to her and was now trying to comfort her.

"She was a very special girl," Elizabeth said again, her voice more gentle and grounded than it had been all day. To anyone but Aigis, the slight tremble in her otherwise modulated speech patterns would have been unnoticeable. "Most unusual, but…it seems that she meant the same to you as she did to me."

She squeezed Aigis's shoulder gently.

"In fact, I am surprised you have not yet paid your respects at her funeral," she continued. "The grieving process is all part of being human, after all."

The monstrous emotion inside Aigis had had enough. With a final desperate gambit it settled in her head and flooded all of her systems at once. The robot girl could see meters turning red as her fists clenched and unclenched involuntarily, over and over again. Images flashed through her brain as files upon files were involuntarily accessed, memories she had tried to prevent herself from bringing to the surface. She started to tremble violently. There was no explanation for it all but nothing she could do logically to calm herself down was working. Next to her, Elizabeth sat, motionless, her hand still resting on the girl's shoulder. Finally, Aigis spoke, her voice quiet and slow, dripping with the same heavy emotion that had attacked her since Graduation Day, each word an immense effort to push out.

"If being human means feeling this way," she said, "then I no longer wish to be human."

With her confession in the open air, the violent feeling inside her subsided, leaving her with nothing but the weight of the past few days resting heavily on her back. She slumped forward. Gently, silently, Elizabeth stood up again.

"I see," she said. When Aigis looked at her face, she noticed the woman in blue was wearing a sad smile. For the first time since meeting her that evening, Aigis could look into Elizabeth's eyes and recognize grief of her own. "It was a pleasure to finally meet you."

"And I you," Aigis replied. Her ability to recognize formalities was, at least, intact.

"I believe we will be meeting again very soon," Elizabeth said. Her face had rearranged itself into its usual mysteriously amused expression. "Judging from what you have told me, it may be sooner than you think."

She curtseyed once more.

"Until that day comes, I remain your obedient servant. Farewell."

Before she could reply, Aigis blinked, and Elizabeth had vanished. She frowned and ran a check on her optical units, but they were functioning at full capacity. She checked all her systems thoroughly. Despite the overload earlier, they all seemed to be operating well within normal limits. She had no idea what to make of the strange individual she had just met. Perhaps defying logic was also what it meant to be human.

Nighttime had truly settled on the mall at this point. The soft artificial glow of the lights muted the usually vibrant colors of the shopping center. There were very few people still in the mall, outside of a few stragglers at the arcade and a line of people hoping to get into Escapade. Aigis traced the motion of the fountain with her eyes once more, and from a pocket in her uniform she withdrew a ten-yen coin.

Perhaps, she thought, she should make a wish.


End file.
